Exercise may be performed to serve two purposes; recreation and rehabilitation. Many individuals exercise for entertainment or to relieve stress. Other individuals, however, are required to perform certain exercises in order to rebuild damaged or weakened muscle tissue. Regardless of the motivation for exercise, the result is that the individual is not only stimulating muscle hypertrophy, but also maintaining and strengthening all of his physiological systems.
There are three fundamental anatomical planes in which an individual's body may move; sagittal, frontal, and transverse. The sagittal plane divides the body into a right and left half. The frontal plane divides the body into an anterior half and a posterior half. And the transverse plane, which is at right angles to both the frontal and sagittal planes, divides the body into upper and lower halves. A body may also move in a combination of these planes. For example, a body may move diagonally in an oblique plane. This oblique plane is a combination of the sagittal and frontal planes. A body may also move in an elliptical direction, thus moving in a combination of all three fundamental planes plus the oblique plane.
There are also various types of exercise modes designed to stimulate muscle hypertrophy; concentric (muscle-shortening), eccentric (muscle-lengthening), isometric (muscle loading at one joint position), isotonic (constant tension), and isokinetic (constant speed). However, many types of exercise equipment are designed only to allow for movement in a certain plane or limit the user to performing only a specific exercise mode.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,509,870 discloses a slide board that allows a user to mimic the motions of speed skaters and hockey players by sliding in a predominately lateral direction. This device has side blocks that minimize the user's lateral movement and hold the device in place during such vigorous exercise. Because of the type of exercise for which this device is intended, however, the device is fairly large and cumbersome. Furthermore, the user is limited to performing the functional movement of skating. Also, with this type of exercise, a user will not be strengthening the muscle groups in his upper extremities.
U.S. Pat. No. D428,454 describes a device comprising a platform portion which the individual may grasp while in a quadruped position. The platform is set upon four wheels that allow the platform to roll in all directions, thereby requiring the user to employ his abdominal muscles to control the device. However, a problem arises when the device is used on carpet. The wheels may become caught on long or stray carpet fibers. Furthermore, the device cannot be used effectively on tiled floors because the wheels will become stuck in the grooves between the tiles.
Therefore a need existed for a portable device for recreational and rehabilitative exercise comprising in combination, a substantially square-shaped slide board having a substantially level top surface with a low coefficient of friction, and at least one sliding device for allowing a user to maneuver any combination of his hands, elbows, feet, and knees or posterior torso across the slide board.
A further need existed for methods of exercise wherein the individual may use functional movements as well as unilateral and bilateral movements with both upper and lower extremities and wherein the exercise allows the individual's body to move in an anatomical plane that is sagittal, frontal, transverse, oblique or in a combination thereof.